By this time, however, I was so confident of my position that I got out the oil can and began to lubricate deliberately the further shaft end of the wheel. While I was in the very act, a metallic glint, struck by the lantern light from some object pinned on to the huge hub that crossed the channel almost directly in front of my line of vision, caught my eye and drove me to pause. I craned my neck to get a nearer view, and gave so great a start of wonder as to lose my hold of the oiler, which fell with clink and splash into the water underfoot. Nailed to the great axle was something that looked like the miniature portrait of a man; but it was so stained and flaked by years of dark decay that the features were almost obliterated. The face had been painted in enamel on an oval of fluxed copper; yet even this had not been able to resist the long corrosion of the atmosphere in which it was held prisoner. I could make out only that the portrait was that of a young man of fair complexion, thin, light-haired and dressed in the fashion of a bygone generation. More I had not time to observe; for, as I gazed, suddenly with a falling sway and a flicker the lantern at my waist went out. CHAPTER XLVI. CAUGHT. In the first horror of blackness I came near to letting go the rope and falling from my perch on the blade. My brain went with a swing and turn and a sick wave overwhelmed my heart and flooded all my chest with nausea. Was I trapped after all--and just when confidence seemed established in me? For some evil moments I remained as I was, not daring to move, to look up, even; blinded only by the immediate plunge into cabined night, terrible and profound. I had left the matches above. There was no rekindling of the lamp possible. Up through the darkness I must climb--and how? Then for the first time it occurred to me that my father’s directions had not included the method of the return journey. Perhaps he had thought it unnecessary. To clearer senses the means would have been obvious--a scramble, merely, by way of the paddles, while the wheel was held in position by the rope. In the confusion of my senses I thought that my only way was to swarm up the dangling rope; and, without doubt, such was a means, if an irksome one, of escape. Only I should have left the tackle anchored as it was to the wheel. This I did not do, but, moved by a sudden crazy impulse, stooped and turned the button that held all in place. It was good fortune only that saved me then and there from the full consequences of my act. For, pulled taut as it was, and well out of the perpendicular, the moment it was released the rope swung through the slit like a pendulum, carrying me, frantically clinging to it with one hand, off the paddle. Then, before I had time to put out my free hand to ward off the danger, clump against the wheel I came in the return swing, and with such force that I was heavily bruised in a dozen places and near battered from my hold.